What: Tim Cook will read from his award-winning book Shock Troops which follows the Canadian fighting forces during the titanic battles of Vimy Ridge, Hill 70, Passchendaele, and the Hundred Days campaign. Shock Troops builds on Volume I of Cook’s national bestseller At the Sharp End.

When: Friday, October 30, 2009; 8:00 p.m.

Where: Brigantine Room, York Quay Centre, Toronto.

Why: Signature Non-Fiction event at highly regarded 10-day authors’ festival.Tim Cook, Charles Taylor Prize founder Noreen Taylor, and Charles Taylor Foundation trustee David Staines will be available for media interviews. The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction is presented annually by the Charles Taylor Foundation with the support of its partners: AVFX, Ben McNally Books, Book TV, Bravo!, Canada Newswire, CBC Radio One, The Globe and Mail, Le Meridien King Edward Hotel, Quill & Quire publications, and Windfields Farm.Previous Winners of the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction:2000 Wayne Johnston for Baltimore's Mansion: A Memoir2002 Carol Shields for Jane Austen2004 Isabel Huggan for Belonging: Home Away from Home2005 Charles Montgomery for The Last Heathen: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia 2006 J.B. MacKinnon for Dead Man in Paradise 2007 Rudy Wiebe for Of this Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest 2008 Richard Gwyn for John A.: The Man Who Made Us 2009: Tim Cook for Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917–1918,Volume 2 The trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation are Michael Bradley (Toronto), Judith Mappin (Montreal), David Staines (Ottawa), and Noreen Taylor (Toronto).

CUTLINE: Noreen Taylor and this year's winner of the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, Ottawa historian Tim Cook. Cook won the 2009 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction for his book Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917 – 1918, Volume Two, published by Viking Canada. The prize of $25,000 was awarded Monday, February 9, 2009, at a gala luncheon held in the historic Sovereign Ballroom of Toronto’s Le Meridien King Edward Hotel. Photo by Tom Sandler

About Me

Like many other self-employed communicators in Toronto I have an exciting/active career. On one hand I am an active publicist working on many high profile projects including the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Toronto Caribbean Carnival and RBC Taylor Prize, Cundill Prize on the other, as a journalist I have one book published (The Sinking of the Mayflower) under my name and have ghost written two other books. I am the travel editor of Diver Magazine and I write travel stories, cultural stories and housing stories for a number of daily newspapers in Canada.I am a Huffington Post. For forty years I have been researching, watching and writing about the History of Diving in the Movies. In the pages of Diver Magazine and a variety of other publications, my articles have been titled Blood And Bubble movies. I have documented over 3,000 movies dating back to the 19th century that show actors/actresses diving or snorkeling on film. My website, with three Blogs and a photography section represent just four small aspects of my work. Always Busy. Never Bored. stephen@stephenweir.com.